Review: Pink Cadillac

Clint Eastwood stars as a skip tracer and all-round master of disguise. After her dipshit husband (Timothy Carhart- who else?) runs off with some neo Nazi morons (led by Michael Des Barres!), Bernadette Peters makes off with their large stash of counterfeit cash and their 8 month old baby, and attempts to drive off in her hubby’s prized pink Cadillac, before getting busted by the cops, looking for Carhart and co. After posting bail she once again sets off in the car, and this is when Eastwood is sent after her. He manages to track her down in a casino in Reno, and so starts a love-hate relationship as Eastwood attempts to bring her in to the authorities, whilst the baddies pop up from time to time looking to get their money back. John Dennis Johnston, Michael Champion, Sven-Ole Thorsen, and Bill Moseley play Des Barres’ associates, whilst Geoffrey Lewis turns up as a hippie phony passport maker. Frances Fisher (soon to be Mrs. Eastwood for a brief while) plays Peters’ sister, Gerry Bamman plays Eastwood’s jerk boss, William Hickey plays a landlord, Bill McKinney is a bartender, James Cromwell plays a goofy motel owner, Jim Carrey has a cameo as a Vegas stand-up comic, and Paul Benjamin appears as a judge.

 

Clint Eastwood appears to be trying for light-hearted goofball action-comedy in this 1989 flick from director/stuntman Buddy Van Horn (“Any Which Way You Can”, “The Dead Pool”). Unfortunately, Eastwood just isn’t a natural comedian, and overall this kind of rowdy action/comedy is more Burt Reynolds’ bag than Eastwood’s anyway. Clint tries (not something you can always say about him), but boy is he unconvincing as a supposed master of disguise and accents. Also miscast is Michael Des Barres, the slick, English-born musician/actor being an ill-fit for the leader of a gang of white supremacist, backwoods yahoos (Then again, one of them is played by bodybuilder Sven-Ole Thorsen, now I think of it. So maybe they weren’t going for realism). He seems far too urbane, and can’t do an American accent for the life of him. Thankfully, Clint’s paired up with Bernadette Peters who is perfectly cast and enjoyable. She’s second only to Rene Russo in “In the Line of Fire” in terms of on-screen chemistry with Clint (She’s certainly a lot more palatable than Sondra Locke or Genevieve Bujold).

 

Scripted by John Eskow (“Air America”, “The Mask of Zorro”), the film itself has some enjoyable moments here and there, and a pretty large cast of familiar names and faces. The one to make the most memorable impression is probably Eastwood regular Geoffrey Lewis, having a whale of a time in a dopey ponytail playing a hippie creator of phony IDs. He’s a lot of fun, and I haven’t got a clue why he’s uncredited in the opening. John Dennis Johnston (most familiar from “48HRS”), James Cromwell, and Gerry Bamman (the a-hole uncle in the “Home Alone” films) are also enjoyable, the latter two are particularly amusing. I was pretty disappointed, however, by how little the inimitable Bill Moseley (“Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2”) and especially Michael Champion (“Total Recall”, “Toy Soldiers”) were given as two of Des Barres’ henchmen. Moseley has a few scenes, but Champion gets practically no dialogue at all (Apparently Champion quit the biz in the late 90s to devote his life to God, interestingly enough). Veteran character actors William Hickey and Paul Benjamin probably deserved a bit more love, but their roles are such that it probably wasn’t possible to write them into the film more. Look out for Jim Carrey’s second appearance in an Eastwood/Van Horn film, here playing a comedian doing a bizarro Elvis routine that Mr. Eastwood’s character seems a bit dismissive of. Me, I thought it was the comic highlight of the film. He’s funnier in 10 seconds than Eastwood is throughout the entire film. 10 minutes later, Eastwood proves my point by trying to do an impersonation of Peters. He fails. Badly. Really badly. By far the best asset is the blues rock score by Steve Dorff (“Waltz Across Texas”, “Pure Country”), it’s pretty kick-arse stuff.

 

If you’ve ever wanted to see Clint Eastwood with a clown nose, here’s your movie. I prefer to see him in roles he’s actually a comfortable fit in. He ain’t Chevy Chase and this box-office flop ain’t no “Fletch”. Bernadette Peters is terrific, and the film is certainly watchable and light-hearted, so long as you’re an admirer of films like “White Lightning” and “Gator”. Wet fart of an ending, though, which is a shame. Recast the lead and the villain (Burt Reynolds, Kevin Costner or Jeff Bridges in for Eastwood, R. Lee Ermey, Joe Don Baker or Charles Napier in for Des Barres), and you’ve got a much better, if still dumb (fun) film. As is, it’s almost but not quite worth seeing.

 

Rating: C+